Pumpkin Helmet

During the Halloween season pumpkins sprout on grass by themselves, so the whole set costs you a walk around your world and some patience. That timing is the appeal: it is one of the very few armors you can be wearing before you have beaten a single boss. Off season there are two slower routes. Shimmer converts cactus into pumpkins, or you can buy seeds from the Dryad and grow a field, which means clearing a boss first since she will not move in before that.

The damage boost is the reason to wear it, and it applies to every damage type instead of one class, so it fits whatever weapon you happened to pick up. Early armor almost never gives you offense at all. A character in pumpkin gear kills things visibly faster than one in wood or cactus and takes fewer hits doing it, simply because fights end sooner.

It outlasts its armor value, since a flat damage increase keeps mattering long after a few points of protection stop. The drop off comes when you can craft a set built around your weapon type, because a targeted bonus with real defense behind it beats a general one. If you make new characters often, leave a planted pumpkin field standing somewhere instead of starting the farm over each year.